This piece is excerpted from the new book Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Shape the Future.
In 2019, I published what I believe to be one of my most important reports, “The Digital Change Agent’s Manifesto.” It was the result of more than five years of research and thirty interviews with those who have led digital transformation initiatives for the world’s most renowned brands, including Coca-Cola, Equifax, FCC, NFL, Samsung, Starbucks, and Visa. The report focused on those leading digital transformation within their organizations. I highlighted a number of change agents who were rising to the occasion and fostering change.
Before we continue, when I use the term change agent, I simply mean a believer in and catalyst of progress; this is someone who sees a better future and is on the cusp or in the process of becoming a leader. I am not referring to leaders of marketing or publicity initiatives masquerading as meaningful change.
I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.
Angela Davis
The change agents I studied were often not officially sanctioned to lead change. They generally were not 100% confident that it was their place to speak up and champion what they were advocating. They were often reluctant to step up to leadership. Nor did they desire to campaign for a change-management role or believe in traditional change management. Many were not fans of corporate procedure, and certainly not of bureaucracy. They called to mind something Jony Ive once said: “I always thought that the idea of a company was a necessary evil to make an idea relevant.” He laughed, but he was serious.
These change agents ended up moving their organizations forward nonetheless, because they also shared the belief that they had an understanding of the potential impacts of disruptive technologies and they were willing to play a role in helping their teams and organizations capitalize on them. That fueled their transition from their comfort zones to conference rooms and eventually boardrooms.
They collectively described themselves as problem-solvers and critical thinkers. But they also differed in some traits. Some said they are extroverts and others introverts. Some said they find comfort in chaos and being self-starters. Others said they are cautious and need internal support and validation to further their efforts. In other words, there is no one type of person who can become a change agent.
My research found that change agents can rise from anywhere in the organization. No matter where they sit, they all care passionately about translating trends into actions. When I asked these leaders whether they were committed to staying at their current employers or might consider moving to the proverbial greener grass of a new company, they responded time and time again that they would stay as long as they believed they “could effect change here.”
Change agents step up to lead mindshifts because they care so much about their companies succeeding. They pay close attention to trends reshaping their markets, whether that’s evolving customer expectations or behaviors, changing employee expectations and desires, or emergent technologies. They seek to understand what’s happening and why, and they explore ways to proactively respond.
At some point, a mindshift takes place in their career and they realize that they can’t just sit idly waiting for someone else to rise and lead the way. It’s their willingness and willful thinking that helps them evolve to become leaders, in phases, not overnight. They are not always skilled at first in getting buy-in, and most are turned off by the politics of organizations. They also probably wouldn’t refer to themselves as change agents.
When I ask leaders who have successfully rallied their companies to capitalize on emergent trends how they’ve done it, they always share that they learned how to earn influence within their organization.
Despite their aversion to corporate politicking, because these leaders realize that their expertise can be productive and beneficial to the rest of the organization, they put the work in to learn to navigate corporate relationships better and become skilled in the art of “managing up” and “managing across,” with colleagues in different areas of the organization, to rally support and collaborate on the change process.
When I ask leaders who have successfully rallied their companies to capitalize on emergent trends how they’ve done it, they always share that they learned how to earn influence within their organization. They formed strategic alliances, focusing not just on managing their teams well, but on building relationships with key decision-makers, eventually including those at the executive level, even including those in the C-suite.
Over time as they influence positive change, they often rise into official leadership positions. Their ability to understand trends, their vision, and their ability to bring people together make them “heroes” in their organization, though they definitely wouldn’t describe themselves that way.
Leadership Is Not a Rank, It’s a Choice
This heading is a quote from Simon Sinek, author of a bestselling book on leadership, Leaders Eat Last. In his research on leadership, he found that so many people in business who are in leadership positions are not truly leaders. “I know many people at the senior most levels of organizations who are absolutely not leaders, they are authorities.” He points out, “We do what they say because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. I know many people who are at the bottoms of organizations who have no authority, and they are absolutely leaders.”
What makes for a true leader? I can find no better authority on this than Steve Jobs.
When asked about what he looked for in the people he wanted to bring into the company to help him lead the Apple revolution, he said,
“The greatest people are self-managing—they don’t need to be managed. Once they know what to do, they’ll go figure out how to do it. What they need is a common vision. And that’s what leadership is: having a vision; being able to articulate that so the people around you can understand it; and getting a consensus on a common vision.”
Jobs sought people who believed in better outcomes, not the traditional managed outcomes. In a later interview, he recounted:
“We wanted people who were insanely great at what they did, but were not necessarily those seasoned professionals. We went through that stage at Apple, where we went out and we thought, ‘We’re going to be a big company, let’s hire professional management.’ It didn’t work at all. Most of them were bozos. They knew how to manage, but they didn’t know how to do anything!”
“You know who the best managers are?” Jobs asked. “They’re the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager but decide they have to be a manager, because no one else is going to be able to do as good a job as them.” He emphasized that they are doers in addition to visionaries. He didn’t believe a person is necessarily one or the other. When he was asked in one interview about the balance between thinking and doing in innovating, he responded, “My observation is that the doers are the major thinkers. The people that really create the things that change this industry are both the thinker and doer in one person.”
Steve Jobs also stressed passion, and he saw it not as anything romantic, as only a strong feeling; he saw it as a form of pragmatism. At a 2007 conference, Jobs was joined by Bill Gates for a conversation on innovation and future trends. Each was asked to share his single, most valuable piece of advice. Jobs responded:
“People say you have a lot of passion for what you’re doing, and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard, that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. You have to do it over a sustained period of time. So, if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it… you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being successful in the eyes of society, and the ones who didn’t, oftentimes it’s the ones that are successful, love what they did so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it, quit. So, you gotta love it, you gotta have passion.”
Jobs then called this advice the high-order bit, borrowing a programming term that describes the bit position in a binary number with the greatest value. In other words, passion trumps all. As he said, “People with passion can change the world for the better.”
In his must-see Stanford commencement speech in 2005, Jobs commended the graduates, “You’ve got to find what you love. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”
Brian Solis is head of Global Innovation at ServiceNow, Former VP of Global Innovation at Salesforce, Digital Futurist, Silicon Valley Luminary and author of the forthcoming book Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future (Wiley, October 15th).
Excerpted with permission from the publisher, Wiley, from Mindshift: Transform Leadership, Drive Innovation, and Reshape the Future by Brian Solis. Copyright © 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. This book is available wherever books and eBooks are sold.
Featured image by Tobias Mrzyk on Unsplash.
